Daily Didactic
Our day began for the second time this trip at the (...curiously land locked...) Grand Island KOA. While not a very exciting KOA, it is likely the last campground we will stay at that is tucked between parcels of farmland, which makes us kind of sad. We headed back up to Highway 30 and wandered westward. Both Iowa and Nebraska, along Highway 30, are this fascinating repeating pattern of three or four towns of 500 residents and then a town of a few thousand. The towns of 500 all have one grain elevator, one small store, and one saloon. The larger towns are obviously where the folks from the smaller towns go to do business. Between the towns, the road is either bracketed on both sides by corn fields, or on one side by corn and the other side by a train track. It is also 90 degrees in the shade. It is easy to imagine the amount of work that must go on in this part of the country, and very difficult to imagine living here.

After a few days of corn and small towns, we finally dropped into the northeast corner of Colorado, where things were noticabley different. It would be fair to point out that of the two things that were most different, the lack of corn and the introduction of hills, the rolling hills started in Nebraska. We swapped Highway 30 for 138, and then 14, and eventually drove into Fort Collins, a good sized town with the good sized Colorado State University campus. We headed south to Loveland, hung an east and began the extradordinarily pretty climb up into Rocky Mountain National Park. After finding a campsite at Moraine Park, we dropped back down into Estes Park for a burger and cell phone reception and then climbed back up to our 8500 foot lodging. The fan is tucked away and the sleeping bag is out. Wahoo!